How to Permanently Delete Patients
In this tutorial, you will learn how to permanently delete a patient from your account. Before you do, please read about the safer alternatives.
Note: Only users with the Delete Patients permission can delete patients. This is a deliberately restricted action.
Please Read This First
Deleting a patient is permanent and cannot be undone. In almost all cases you should not delete a patient. If a patient was entered in error or is a duplicate, consider voiding it instead, which hides it from your records while preserving your case numbering. See Alternatives to Deleting a Patient before continuing.
Deleting is intentionally difficult so that it cannot happen by accident. Only users who have been granted the Delete Patients permission will see the options described below.
How to Delete a Single Patient
WRMD only lets you delete the most recently admitted patient of a given year. If you have five patients and want to remove the fourth, you cannot – you would have to delete the fifth first. Deleting is strongly discouraged unless the most recent admission is a significant error that should never have occurred.
Step 1
Click your avatar in the upper-right corner and choose Maintenance from the dropdown menu.
Step 2
In the sidebar, click the red Delete a Patient link.
Step 3
Read the warning. The page confirms that this action permanently deletes the patient and that only the last patient from the year you choose can be deleted. From the Patient's Year dropdown, choose the year you want to delete the last patient from.
Step 4
Enter your login password in both the Your Password and Confirm Your Password fields.
Step 5
Click the red I Understand the Consequences, Delete the Patient button. A confirmation message will appear noting that the patient was deleted.
How to Delete an Entire Year of Patients
Deleting an entire year is mainly useful if you are new to WRMD and want to clear out practice patients you entered while learning the system.
If your organization has the Delete all Patients option enabled, you can remove every patient from a single year at once.
Step 1
Click your avatar in the upper-right corner and choose Maintenance from the dropdown menu, then click the red Delete all Patients link in the sidebar.
Step 2
Read the warning, then choose the year from the Patient's Year dropdown.
Step 3
Enter your login password in both the Your Password and Confirm Your Password fields.
Step 4
Click the red I Understand the Consequences, Delete All Patients button. A confirmation message will appear noting that all patients for that year were deleted.